Teach

What messages do you want your environment to send? How do you want staff members, children, and families to feel while they are in your space? What do you want them to learn?

There are several things to keep in mind as you help staff design or redesign their classroom or program spaces. First, you should contribute your expertise on high-quality environments. You must know what a high-quality learning environment looks like for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, school-age children, and youth. You can read the age-specific Learning Environment courses for a review. These lessons stress the importance of the physical environment, how the environment sends messages to children, youth and adults about how to appropriately use the space, and how arrangement of the environment can hinder or facilitate staff’s work with children and families. The lessons include information on developing and communicating predictable schedules and routines. In addition, the lessons provide information on constructing indoor and outdoor environments that are:

• Designed to support the interests and development of children and youth, including information on relevant interest or activity areas that could be included based on child age
• Organized to support independence, easy use, and learning
• Full of materials that are developmentally appropriate, culturally relevant, open-ended (i.e., materials that can be used in a variety of ways), and that support a variety of learning goals for children or youth
• Simultaneously engaging, with interesting experiences, and calming with home-like attributes
• Supportive of all children and youth

You must also be able to communicate this information to staff members. This lesson will help you identify high-quality environments and provide suggestions for helping staff members continuously improve their learning environments. Although many staff members view the environment as an expression of their creativity and approach to teaching, you hold the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that environments are designed for learning.

Many staff members may need you to provide them with information about child development. Make sure staff members understand the unique needs of the age group with which they work:

You must be prepared to teach staff members about the role the environment plays in the curriculum and in child behavior. Talk to staff members about how their environments are designed to support engagement and active learning. Also be prepared to encourage staff members to look at their environments first when challenging behaviors occur.

Model

You are the content specialist in your program, so it is your job to be a role model for effective practices. You should have an active role in designing environments. Help staff members arrange their spaces. As you do so, talk about why it is important to arrange environments in systematic ways (separating loud and quiet spaces, providing boundaries, etc.). Spend time talking about the space, sharing organization tips, and helping move furniture. Brainstorm together when problems arise. Model looking at the environment first when challenging behaviors occur. Ask questions like:

• What do you think this environment is communicating to the children or youth?
• What are your goals for this space?
• How do you think children or youth should use this space?
• Is it easy to do what needs to be done here? Why or why not? What would make it easier?
• What problems are children having? What messages do you think they are trying to send with their behavior?

Model curiosity and problem solving as you work with staff members. When a space needs to be arranged or rearranged, help staff members list all the activities, events, and materials that the space should accommodate. Use that list to set goals for the space and clearly define spaces that serve different functions. Also, keep open lines of communication among staff members who work different shifts in the same space. It is important that all staff members understand the purposes behind environmental arrangement.

Finally, work with your program's management to make sure that your program's shared spaces communicate the same messages as individual classrooms. Model a clean, clutter-free, and learning-focused approach to designing all spaces in your program. This means the front desk, staff break areas, and training rooms are all arranged with learning in mind.

Observe

It is your responsibility to ensure that staff members provide high-quality, engaging environments. As with safety, your program may have tools to evaluate the quality of indoor and outdoor environments. Several environmental rating scales are commercially available (ITERS-R, ECERS-R, SACERS). You can also use the National Association for the Education of Young Children environment standards or other tools developed for school-age programs. These tools can provide valuable information to help focus a staff member's professional development around the learning environments and materials they provide.

Observing and talking with staff members are the best means for assessing the strengths and meeting the challenges of their learning environments. It is important for you to know each staff member's individual strengths and challenges. Remember, you may also need to support consistency across different shifts among staff members who work in the same classroom.

Let's begin by taking another look at a classroom that you first were introduced to in the Safety Course. Making simple improvements to an environment often can have a major impact on the overall classroom experience — including safety and learning. You've already watched this video and thought about the safety implications. Now, take some time to think about how this space affects learning.

Case Example Step 1: Make a Plan

What did you notice about this environment? Did it maximize opportunities for learning? Did it provide a strong foundation for the curriculum? As a trainer or coach, it is your responsibility to provide supports so the answers to the last two questions are “Yes!” Think about what specific strategies a trainer, coach, and classroom team might discuss to help maximize learning in this environment. In the Safety Course, the trainer, coach, and teachers discussed creating “zones” for easy supervision, developing a role-by-responsibility matrix so adults knew what to do at all times in each zone, and taking data on “hot spots” in the classroom. These same steps can be powerful ways to promote learning. In this case, we would begin to provide the staff members with some rationale for why and how zones and active supervision promote learning. Here is an example of the simple way a goal about the classroom environment can include learning outcomes:

Case Example Step 2: Provide Feedback

It’s important to talk to staff members about their environments. When staff members perceive challenging behavior, it is helpful to consider the environment first. In this case example, the trainer or coach might say something like:

Case Example Step 3: Provide Resources

All of us need the right tools to do our jobs. Use the information you have gathered to connect staff members with resources they need. You might model a skill, arrange for a staff member to observe in another classroom or program, bring in materials from a lending library, or brainstorm new ways to arrange a space. For example, a variety of commercial vendors offer free sample classroom blueprints-the company that sells your program's furniture may have resources you can find online. You could compare the strengths and weaknesses of each and brainstorm ways you could apply designs with the furniture and materials you already have. You might also help connect staff members with resources about teaming, or working with each other to solve problems. The University of Minnesota REACH program https://reachfamilies.umn.edu/about-professional-development# has a variety of resources for developing your coaching skills and helping support adult learners.

You can also see some example floor plans for infants, toddlers and preschoolers by visiting: http://www.spacesforchildren.com/flrpln.html. Although these are examples of potential ways to design the layout of spaces, remember the safety and policy regulations in your program and help staff members consider these when they develop classroom layouts.

Additional Examples of Learning Environments

As a trainer or coach, you will likely see a range of environments across a range of age groups. Watch the following videos to see examples of environments with varying levels of quality. The case example followed an infant and toddler setting, and these examples represent preschool and school-age settings. Each video ends with a summary of how you might follow up with the staff members.

Completing this Course

For more information on what to expect in this course and a list of the accompanying Learn, Explore and Apply resources and activities offered throughout the lessons, visit the Training & Curriculum Specialist Learning Environments Course Guide. 

To support the professional development of the direct care staff members or family child care providers you oversee, you can access their corresponding Course Guides:

• Infant & Toddler Learning Environments Course Guide
• Preschool Learning Environments Course Guide
• School-Age Learning Environments Course Guide
• Family Child Care Learning Environments Course Guide